Dead motherboard or PSU?

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Yesterday, my PC randomly switched itself off in the middle of watching a video. I switched it back on, the BIOS screen came up, but it turned off again immediately after. Now it won't get to that stage at all. All that happens is the hard drive spins up, the CD drive spins, then after about 5 seconds, everything turns off again. The computer turns back on again after a further 5 seconds or so.

I feel I may have multiple problems here, but they all started when the computer randomly shut down. I'm wondering why it did this, and if there is anything I can do to get it to POST at least.

Things I have tried:
Putting a jumper on the clear CMOS pins and leaving it overnight.
Disconnecting my hard drive and SSD.
Cursing at it.
Cursing at it again.

What might the problem be here? Why won't it even POST?

Motherboard:
Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 rev 1.0
 
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adycopilu

adycopilu

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Mar 8, 2013
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Have you checked the CPU fan? The BIOS has some configuration setting to protect the CPU: it powers-off your system if it detects 0rpm from the CPU fan. You can swap the CPU fan with a case fan (I mean the connectors to the motherboard) or you can disable the related flag from BIOS. Be careful, if CPU fan is not spinning, don't keep it running like this for too long.
 
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Thanks for your reply. I have left the side of the case open, and the CPU fan is definitely running.
 
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adycopilu

adycopilu

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Mar 8, 2013
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Rulling that out, I would go for the PSU. It's possible that it can't deliver enough power during POST (during high-consumption components initialization, like CPU or video card). Also, it is worth knowing whether you get any beep codes from the motherboard?

LE: it may help to go through the steps described here.
 
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There are no beeps. I just removed the GPU and it still doesn't work. I will try with a much older motherboard to see where the problem lies. Thanks for your help!
 
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Quick update. The older motherboard works flawlessly. I looked at the link you posted, and I seem to have checked most of them, with the exception of my RAM. This is because I have only one stick, the other one having died about a year ago. I have no spares, which is a huge issue. So what we know is that the problem is within the realms of the motherboard.

I am fixated on that weird random shutdown, and its "last dying gasp" before it stopped booting at all. It just feels like something has died, but what could it be? If it was RAM, would Linux have displayed a kernel panic rather than simply turning off? I feel this is one I can't get to the bottom of without spare parts to test.

Regardless, thanks for your help! If you have any further ideas, I'm all ears.
 
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adycopilu

adycopilu

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Mar 8, 2013
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Usually, if there are no beeps, it's the PSU or the motherboard. Since you managed to boot with the older motherboard, I would guess it's the motherboard fault. However, this is just a guess! If you can't get better advice from somebody on the forum, I would advise you to go to a local service and run a debug for the whole system, especially the motherboard.
 
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Hmm... are there any diagnostics I can run at home? I'd not like to buy a motherboard to find my CPU has died... again. (I must say, for a guy who doesn't overclock, I'm quite unlucky because this would be my second dead CPU) Would spare parts be a necessity for that kind of testing?
 
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TenPc

TenPc

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Jul 11, 2012
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Jumper on the cmos pins, it is a quick slip and not meant to be left on, it is shorting the cmos to reset to default, you might have wrecked the cmos for good.

If your PSU is under-powered then watching movies may have caused the shut down.
It's rarely the CPU, it's quite difficult to wreck a CPU unless you have no thermal paste or way too much then it burns itself out.
What are your specs? PSU? Make and model?
 
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